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Cath stretched her legs across Levi’s and leaned her head back to ease the tension in her neck. It was four minutes before midnight, and she had been bent over her computer reading to her boyfriend for three and a half hours. Levi opened his eyes at her movement and graced her with a tired smile. He grabbed her legs smoothly pulling her towards him and between his legs, while wrapping her up in his arms. She let her eyes slip close and felt her face relax.
“We can finish in the morning, sweetheart, you need to sleep before your big day.” he whispered, his breath tickling her neck.
She groaned and sat up to face him. “Please don’t remind me about tomorrow, I can’t think about it without getting nauseous.” He chuckled and let her snuggle up against him.
“I’m not sure why you’re the one freaking out, when I'm the one graduating. I’m the one that has to worry about tripping across the stage, or dropping my diploma, or--”
Cath ended his argument with a punch to his stomach. This was a risky move for her because touching Levi’s abs, or anywhere on his body really, tended to distract her from whatever she was doing; something that Levi tended to use to his advantage during their playful arguments. She finally managed to drag her thoughts back to the graduation ceremony.
“Oh, you think you have to worry? Last time I checked you weren’t the one reading your very personal writing to a massive crowd on the most important day of peoples’ lives!” Levi’s face split into the grin he used when she was overreacting, which ticked her off because she wasn’t overreacting. This was a big deal for her, and he should know that. Levi, always infuriatingly observant, noticed the change in her expression and pressed a kiss to the top of her head to calm her.
Just the thoughts of what she had to do tomorrow were enough to make Cath’s pulse race and her stomach drop. It wasn’t just the public speaking, although that was part of it, but it was also the fact that she had never told anyone about her family struggles throughout her childhood and now she had to read them aloud to a stadium filled with strangers. Before her freshman year of college, she would have never even considered reading anything aloud, unless it was to her twin sister Wren. Sure, she had thousands of readers on FanFixx but writing online let her hide behind the screen of her computer. And writing about Baz and Simon was nowhere near as terrifying as writing about her personal life. Now, at the end of her sophomore year, she had somehow been convinced to read her piece from her fiction class at the graduation. This was all Professor Piper’s fault. If she hadn’t forced Cath to finish her final story last year, then she wouldn’t have won the Underclassmen Prize and she wouldn’t be on the verge of a panic attack stressing about tomorrow.
Levi’s arms around her stomach and his hair tickling her face as he nuzzled into her neck pulled her out of her anxiety induced stupor.
“You are going to do great,” he said, punctuating each word with a kiss to the side of her neck. “You’ve been reviewing it non-stop and this has to be, like, the twentieth time you’ve read it to me out loud. I’m pretty sure I could recite it for you. Oh, there’s an idea! I’ll do it tomorrow, and you can graduate.” Cath rolled her eyes and immediately felt like Wren whose eyes seemed to be constantly on the move. Levi had the lamest methods of cheering her up, but it seemed like the cheesier they were, the more it helped. She reached up and pecked Levi on the lips. She knew she didn’t have to verbally thank him; he understood her enough to interpret her physical affection as appreciation.
Talking with Levi calmed her nerves and within a few minutes she realized just how tired she was; he was probably right about the sleep thing. She rolled off of his lap and sprawled herself out on top of the sheets.
“Ok fine, you’ve convinced me. Let's go to sleep”. Levi grinned and slid under the sheets. After a few minutes of tossing and turning Cath was nearly asleep. Just another great effect of being with Levi; she never had any trouble falling asleep when she was close to him. Her mind slowly drifted into an unconscious bliss.
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Cath eyes flew open and she sprang straight up, eliciting a grunt from Levi. She threw the covers off and frantically started running around the room looking for her clothes and her shoes and her brush and oh gosh where were her notecards?
“Cath, what on earth are you doing?” Levi grumbled, pushing his face deeper into his pillow.
“We’re going to be late!” she hissed. Cath clumsily threw him a protein bar from their stash in his closet and tried to ignore how painfully adorable his morning hair was.
“Cath, babe, look at your phone.” Levi calmly put the protein bar on the bedside table and tried to soothe Cath with a hug. It did not work. She wriggled out from his arms and started brushing her hair.
“Levi, babe,” she mimicked, “get ready or we are going to be late!” And that was when she noticed how oddly dark the room was and how there was no light coming from the window. Cath snatched her phone out of Levi’s outstretched hand; it was 3:45 in the morning. They had only been sleeping for three hours. She plopped down back onto the bed and groaned. She didn’t even have to look at Levi to know he was smiling so hard he risked splitting his face open. After a few moments of letting Cath bask in her stupidity, Levi just couldn’t help himself and started to snicker. He was rewarded with a pillow to face, but he knew it was in jest. Before long, Cath and Levi were in hysterics, rolling around on the bed, their stomachs aching from laughing.
A sharp knock on their door interrupted their slightly manic fun. Levi rolled off the bed and smoothly onto his feet, reminding Cath once again that tall didn’t necessarily mean clumsy. Levi drew his hand through his forever messy hair and swung open his door to reveal his very disheveled looking roommate.
“Not gonna lie,” Percy says (Cath thought that was his name, but she wasn’t entirely sure), “I’m a little surprised to see you both fully clothed. You know it’s gotta be bad if I walked all the way up here to tell you to shut up” Cath feels a flush climbing up her cheeks not only at his assumption, but also anger at herself for forgetting her and Levi shared the house with other people. Levi, however, was unphased by the whole situation and just rolled his eyes at the other boy.
“Whatever man, you’re just upset Sheila couldn’t come over tonight” Levi said, sounding as frustrated as Levi ever really got, which was basically Cath’s daily frustration level. She had no idea how that boy kept his upbeat attitude 24/7. It had to be exhausting. After jabbing at each other for a few more minutes, Percy retreated to his room and Levi quietly shut the door.
Levi couldn’t help but chuckle when he turned around to see Cath burrowing her face into her pillow in embarrassment. On any other day he would have teased her about it, no doubt making her even more embarrassed, but he knew she was under enough stress as it was, so he flipped off the light and climbed over his already half-asleep girlfriend. He wrapped her up in his arms, so her head was resting right near his heart, just like he knew she liked it.
“Goodnight again, sweetheart” he whispered. He felt the ghost of her smile brush against his skin, right against his beating heart.
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Cath and Levi woke up to the sound of their alarm clock the next morning and got ready without the frantic rush of just a few hours earlier. Levi put on his graduation robes, which hung awkwardly off his lanky body. Cath reluctantly put on the dress and heels that Reagan and Wren insisted she wore; she never liked dressing up because it made her feel restricted, but the look Levi gave her when he saw her almost made her want to do it more often. Almost.
They swung by the Starbucks Levi worked at to pick up coffees and muffins before heading to the ceremony. When Cath tried to figure out her favorite things about Levi, which she did quite often, the fact that he could get her free Starbucks always ranked incredibly high. They arrived at the ceremony site twenty minutes before they had to; just like Cath wanted. Levi had complained when Cath insisted on leaving much earlier than they needed to, but upon seeing the intimidating look on her face, he had decided to just deal with it. And now here they were. They split with a quick kiss and headed to their respective areas to prepare; Cath went to find Professor Piper backstage, and Levi headed to the back of the arena to find his place in the diploma line.
Cath found Professor Piper rather quickly and they took a few minutes to go through a last-minute rehearsal of her story. Cath couldn’t stop shaking. She had already been nervous before but having Levi by her tended to put a damper on her anxiety. Now it was just her and her trembling hands, shallow breathing, and narrowing vision. She could feel herself falling into a panic attack but there was nothing she could do to stop it. Everything went black.
When she came to, she was sitting up against a wall backstage. She didn’t open her eyes right away but became aware of a pressure on her knees that she could recognize anywhere: Levi’s hands. Her eyes flew open and she forced herself to ignore the room spinning and concentrate on Levi’s face hovering right in front of hers.
“Welcome back to the real world, sweetheart,” he quipped with a hint of a smile on his face, “you’ve really got to stop scaring me like that.” Despite his light banter, Cath could hear the worry in his voice, and she was hit by a stab of guilt. She swallowed it down and forced herself to speak:
“Levi you’re supposed to be in line,” she rasped. Her voice always got scratchy after an attack. She hated it but Levi insisted it was sexy. “What are you doing here?”
“Professor Piper came and got me. She told me you had some sort of anxiety attack and she didn’t know what to do. So, here I am.”
“You shouldn’t have come.” she insisted, but they both knew she was glad that he was here. Levi grabbed her hand and gently hauled her to her feet, simultaneously wrapping her in a hug. He pressed a kiss into her hair, and she buried her face into his chest; she could already feel the effects of her anxiety attack fading away due to the contact.
“You don’t have to do this,” Levi murmured, tickling her scalp with his voice, “Professor Piper could read it, and no one would say anything.” Cath’s head moved against his chest as she shook her head.
“I have to do this. I’ve been preparing for weeks, and if I don’t do it now, I’ll just beat myself up over it.” With this, Levi stepped out of the embrace and gave Cath one of his smiles that were reserved specifically for her. She couldn’t help grinning back.
“Then get out there and get it done. Do it for Baz and Simon.” Cath giggled at his lame attempt to cheer her up, and finally satisfied that she seemed back to normal, Levi pecked her on the nose and walked back to the diploma line.
The ceremony went on without a hitch. Cath read the excerpts from her story and it was met with a standing ovation. Levi bounded across the stage and accepted his diploma with his usual grin splitting across his face. A new chapter was beginning for both. For Levi, he was done with school for the rest of his life and moving on to a job in agricultural planning. For Cath, she had broken down the barrier of opening her work to strangers and was finally ready to take the next step in her writing career; beginning with an internship working under Gemma T. Leslie. There were plenty more obstacles hurdling towards them, but for now they were content to go home and bask in the light of their achievements.